Two filtering issues that made the daily prep noisy and trained the
user to ignore it.
## Tasks: bucket into due-today / upcoming / overdue
The prep was calling `list_notes(due_before=day_date)` and labeling the
result as "tasks due today". That filter is strictly less-than, so it
returned only OVERDUE tasks (a single 68-day-stale task in this user's
case), while the prompt still framed them as fresh today's work. Each
day of the prep treated the same overdue task as new — the user
learned to ignore the line entirely.
`gather_daily_sections` now runs three queries:
- `tasks_due_today` — `due_after=day_date AND due_before=day_date+1`
- `tasks_upcoming` — next 7 days, exclusive of today
- `tasks_overdue` — strictly before today
Overdue entries carry a `days_overdue` count. `_render_sections_for_prompt`
emits three labeled headers ("TASKS DUE TODAY", "UPCOMING TASKS",
"OVERDUE TASKS (still on the list, not currently due)"). The system
prompt has a new TASK BUCKETS rule telling the model: don't call
overdue items "due today"; surface them with their staleness duration
("still on the list 68 days") and frame as a backlog reminder rather
than today's work.
Backwards-compat: `sections["tasks"]` still exists, now as the union
of all three buckets — strictly more useful than the prior overdue-
only behavior any frontend consumer was getting before.
## Events: tz-aware window + proximity filter
The user's "Birthday — 2026-09-29 (FREQ=YEARLY)" event was surfacing
in every daily prep, 5 months out. Root cause: `gather_daily_sections`
built `day_start`/`day_end` as NAIVE datetimes; `list_events` then
called `rrulestr(...).between(naive_from, naive_to)` against an
aware `dtstart`, which throws TypeError, hits the `except Exception`
fallback, and appends the canonical event row — regardless of whether
today is anywhere near a recurrence.
Fix:
1. Construct the day window as TZ-aware in the user's local timezone
and convert to UTC before the query. RRULE expansion now runs
correctly.
2. Defense-in-depth `_filter_proximate_events` drops events whose
start_dt is more than 7 days from `day_date` (in the user's local
TZ — not UTC, so a Friday 23:00 NY event isn't misclassified as
Saturday). If list_events ever leaks a far-future row again, the
prep doesn't surface it.
10 new tests in `tests/test_journal_prep_filtering.py` cover task
bucketing (overdue marker, due-today no-marker, no-due-date), the
proximity filter (the 4/29 reproducer, in-window keeps, local-vs-UTC
boundary, unparseable dates kept rather than suppressed), and the
rendering (overdue staleness shown, due-today doesn't repeat the date,
correct section ordering).
53 tests pass across journal_prep + journal_search + record_moment +
calendar_tool + events. Ruff clean.
Closes Fable task #159.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
bvandeusen
9f8b451d15